BME Special Engagement Seminar - Tetsuhiro Harimoto, PhD

Description

We welcome Dr. Tetsuhiro Harimoto from Harvard University for a speical engagement seminar. Dr. Harimoto is a postdoctoral fellow in the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

Engineering Tumor-homing Bacteria with Synthetic Biology

Abstract: Engineered living cells as therapeutic agents are transforming modern medicine. An emerging focus is tumor-colonizing bacteria, where systemically delivered bacteria have been demonstrated to selectively grow within solid tumors. This natural tropism to tumors presents a unique opportunity to engineer bacteria as programmable drug delivery vehicles to regions inaccessible with existing chemo- and immuno-therapeutics. In this talk, I will describe our recent efforts to enhance bacterial cancer therapies through synthetic biology. I will focus on strategies to address several key challenges for clinical translation including bacterial delivery, therapeutic identification, and off-target effects. Our multidisciplinary approach, spanning from gene circuit design to in vitro and in vivo models, advance bacteria as next-generation drug carriers capable of sensing and responding to diseases within the body.

Bio: Tetsuhiro received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University in 2022. His graduate work in Dr. Tal Danino’s lab focused on the engineering of living microbes as advanced drug delivery vehicles, with a focus on tumor-homing bacteria as cancer therapeutics. Currently, Tetsuhiro is a postdoctoral fellow in the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Working with Dr. Dave Mooney, Tetsuhiro is designing engineered living materials as next-generation drug delivery systems. Tetsuhiro is the recipient of multiple awards including the NCI Predoctoral-to-Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award (F99/K00) and was named as MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 in 2023.